How to Make Money with Social Traffic

his is quite the loaded question. And one that divides the search engine marketer from the social marketer. Depending on who you ask, you will get different responses though. For instance, a search engine marketer that has played around with social media with more intent than to simply build back links here and there, will tell you that social media will never make the kind of money that is made through organic search because of something called targeted intent. On a similar note, Caroline Middlebrook has a great post on social media with a different viewpoint

What I mean by that phrase is that social media tend to be more into visiting websites for the social intent rather than to solve a problem....

For instance...

If you suddenly had a problem with buckling hardwood floors, chances are you would likely go to the internet and google it to see what to do when your floors buckle. If you had bad skin, you may want to know some healthy ways to improve your skin by eating the right foods. If you were looking to make money online by filling out surveys, you may look to see if online surveys actually pay.

I am sure you get the picture here. Organic search marketers will point to these as evidence that the problem-solution formula works because you are addressing the problem at its most available source...by ranking in google or some other search engine.

And likewise, they will state that social traffic doesn't convert because social media tend to look at things as more informational and don't have an agenda.....How to Make Money Using Social Traffic

Of course, the social marketers will strongly disagree with this statement. They will tell you that making money with social media is all about forming bonds or relationships with your visitors and they will point out the potential that relationship marketing (let's call it what it is) has a greater potential for more repeat buyers than the one offs that typically happen with search engine marketers.

The greatest way to make money with social media of course, is through list building or permission marketing. The power of this type of marketing is that you give yourself more ways to connect with the visitor than simply a one-off campaign where the person comes to your website or page, reads your content and then moves on to something else.

One of the biggest things that search engine marketers discount in relation to social media traffic is the visibility factor. SEM typical centers directly on organic search and because of this, will hone in on keywords that have value. But the edge that social marketers have on traditional marketers, is that keywords typically become much less of a factor and the centerpiece of this type of marketing is more about spreading a message virally which in turn may help with organic search indirectly.

Can I Make Money with Social Media Traffic

As you can probably tell, I have still kind of just danced around this question. The answer of course, is yes, but you have to understand that both types of marketing are very different and require unique marketing skill sets to actually master in order to make money online.

Organic search marketing requires SEO, a large network of sites that link to your main site using your keyword(s) and an understanding on how search works.

Social marketing is more of a sales type marketing which requires you to be good with people and understand how to make things flow together.

In my opinion, SEM is much easier than social marketing to master because it has fewer intangibles (such as how good you are with people and communicating your message), and more concrete methods to ranking for keywords.